Advaita Post #13, nr 12 - It's exactly through the falling away ...

June 14, 2012

--- It's exactly through the falling away of the patterns with which you live that your purer self-being becomes visible ---

 
I flow out over the earth and am vapor in space

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Only 'the One' illuminates the mind, the intellect and the senses and their objects.  If you think that you are 'someone', it is simply an illusion. When one cherishes the idea that one is a 'body', then it seems as though the body does everything: it eats, it drinks, etc. This is Ignorance.
 - Siddharameshwar - as recorded by Nisargadatta Maharaj

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There's nothing to say about That
and still the teaching goes on,
the creation goes on.

The words and the creation are clear about That,
when you don't allow yourself to be seduced
by maya's veils.

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Text Satsang

As long as in a certain sense there is a path, you will need to follow it

From an Advaita talk with Douwe Tiemersma, Schiermonnikoog retreat, June 22, 2011

The retreat week is already well under way. You may find that there is a movement in which the purification, the expansion, the opening up, progressively develops. When you get up early in the morning for meditation you can easily feel a resistance. But when you just continue, you notice that the effects come. That's the principle of yoga: when you do it, you get the corresponding effects. If you don't, you don't get the effects. In general this applies to every spiritual path. As long as in a certain sense there is a path, you will need to follow it. Most people have a pretty good idea of how it should actually be, but they don't set themselves forward in that direction, they don't practice. Then, the problems continue. If the practice isn't serious, it doesn't get to the heart of the matter. When you have some sense about which direction it should go, the tools you need to you bring you further seem to simply appear. What works best may be different for different people. Be so wise, for example, as to take an occasional break from your daily train of thoughts and activities. When you start the day with a fifteen minute standing rowing exercise, like we did this morning, then already your situation can truly change. You become wonderfully open and empty. A good energy arises, because with each exhalation the energy sinks. When you do this on a regular basis, you really go one step further: there is stability and clarity in your own energetic sphere, there are no disturbing thought patterns any longer. When you see this clearly, it doesn't take any additional effort to keep going in that direction. That's the most important point. When you do it consistently the development can go very quickly.

The exercises for breaking fixed mental and physical patterns are especially useful. Most physical patterns are deeply entrenched: the orientation of your body in space, above and below, left and right, the size of your body, the shape of your body. The yoga asanas are helpful for breaking through those patterns, especially when you hold them a little bit longer. For example, something is going to happen when you stay in an inverted posture for a few minutes, for example, the half candle posture. You're used to having your feet below. When they are above for a longer period of time that schema is going to shift. You come free of those fixed patterns and you can experience that this release occurs on a deeper physical-emotional level. What's up and down, left and right, front and back, is no longer so clear. Thinking halts. What's left over? You experience yourself. It's a self-feeling but also a being-feeling, a feeling-sense beingness. The whole world can shift, so that you no longer know what's up and down, but this being-feeling remains. All kinds of patterns can fall away, but this being-feeling, your self-being, always remains, ever more purified.

Your own being becomes increasingly free of veils, the kosha's. You can find this doctrine of the kosha's already in the ancient Upanishads. The outermost veil is that of materiality; within it are the more vital energy veils, the veil of sense energies, emotions, the mental veil, the insight veil. In the insight veil there's already a lot of space but there's still a veil which obscures the purified self-being because it's not totally free, because there are still conditions. By returning to the purified self-being the veils become increasingly irrelevant. Of course, the purer self-being has always already existed, it is always totally present, even though you have experienced it in its obscuration, but it's about becoming aware, it's about the realization of it. That's the realization of the self, of that which you truly are.

It's like peeling an onion. The more layers you peel off, the more just emptiness remains. In all phases, the self-being is always the most important, even in that limited egoic form. Of course the ego is self-being too. So the ego isn't all that bad. It is self-being, obscured by the mental and feeling sense ego veils. As the veils fall away the purer self-being remains. Therefore it is so important to return to your self-feeling and the more you return to your source the purer your self-being is. This movement can continue with exercises like, "letting yourself sink into the ocean" or "you become increasingly longer, wider, deeper" or "you enter increasingly into the air". Then all kinds of obfuscations fall away, replete with all the heaviness they retain. When you get close to the true self-being all problems and traumas fall away. When it is pure, there are no veils any longer. Then, in the model of the kosha's, you are in the center. There, you are yourself in the purer sense and are completely open. Of course, it's just a model, but it's a useful model because you can experience something of it. When you, with an internal awareness, completely sink back in relaxation, you notice that more and more of those layers fall away until every conditioning has disappeared and the Inexpressible fully manifests.

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